Blogs and Twitter Tools

An article by Darin Wagner    No Comments

I spoke to a colleague this morning about setting up a blog, and during the conversation he mentioned that he was currently using Twitter to keep parents/guardians updated about what is happening in his classroom. That comment prompted me to look for a WordPress plugin that would send a tweet each time there was a new blog post, thus saving the teacher from having to create two entries – one for his blog and one for Twitter.

The best answer I found for this situation was Twitter Tools. This plugin offers a lot of functionality. For example, you can turn on a feature to automatically tweet each time there is a blog post, plus, you can customize the text that displays in the tweet. Another nice option is to add your bit.ly account information. bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier, and since Twitter limits your message to 140 characters, this is a great option, especially for posts with long titles.

We have yet to explore all the plugin options, but the biggest plus is that the teacher can post to his blog and keep his Twitter followers updated at the same time.